It's important to remember that, as bad as the Depression was, in most cases the majority of people still had jobs. (If national unemployment was 30%, that means 70% of American workers were working, yes?) To be sure, some were only working part-time, and many had had their wages reduced. But prices went down too. It wasn't like today, when people who lose their jobs have to still keep paying the same amount for groceries and rent as when they were working. In fact, most prices in the 1930's were about what they'd been 60 years earlier, in between the inflationary periods of the Civil War and World War I.
People often raised poultry and rabbits in their back yards and had gardens. Newspapers published regular columns on "How to Feed Your Family For 50c." Kids got part-time jobs. So did mothers, or else they worked in their homes (seamstressing, giving manicures, etc.). Often they took in boarders. Families sometimes gave up things like the telephone or the electric lights (hauling the old kerosene lamps out of the attic). (Very few gave up their cars; Will Rogers famously declared that Americans "would be the first people to ride to the poorhouse in their own automobiles.") They handed clothes down within or across family lines. They repaired their own shoes--and their own cars (which weren't half as complicated mechanically as they are today). They cut back on washing dishes and clothes, because mortgage money was too vital to be used for coal (the chief source of household heat in those days).
Brainliest please??
